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Dear All,

This isn’t a Cityrail issue, but this is a BIG issue and I have to get it out there. Some of you may be aware that the Federal Government and more particularly Senator Conroy believe that the Internet is something that should be filtered for all Australians. This filtering can slow down your Internet access by as much as 87%.

The idea behind the scheme is to stop access to content like Child Pornography and other undesirable content being available to Australians, now don’t get me wrong I applaud the ideal of stopping access to this content as it’s despicable, but filtering the Internet for the whole country is not the way to do it.

A prime example is the Governments free online filtering tools for computers in the home. This software has been proven time and time again not to work effectively and is easily bypassed.

Just bear in mind this will only be the start, imagine if there is an undesireable piece of political news internationally that the Australian Government doesn’t want us to see. If they wanted, they could block it, we’d never be able to see it. Whilst that’s not the initial aims of this scheme it’s totally possible.

The internet is what it is because so much information is readily available, it’s free, it’s open and it’s done wonders for the whole world. The internet gives people a voice that didn’t have one, reveals wrongdoings that would otherwise not be revealed, reveals amazing parts of the universe we didn’t know about, and we are going to entrust what we can see to a small group of people.

I’m blown away that this is being proposed, very few countries around the world actually impose this kind of draconian policy, some are China, Iran & Saudi Arabia.

Is that what you want? Surely everyone in Australia must be against this, the internet has to be free and open!

Please sign this online petition to voice your concern, and tell everyone you know, once this is in, it will be twice as hard to remove it.

http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet/442

More information here

http://www.smh.com.au/news/home/technology/activists-target-net-censorship-plans/2008/11/27/1227491695981.html

http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/greens-wont-back-government-plans-for-net-filters/2008/11/25/1227491515967.html

If you want to see what iiNet thinks about this goto

http://www.iinet.net.au/about/news/internet_filtering.html 

I’m thinking 1982 & Animal Farm, but for real, in Australia.

I’m disgusted and if this goes through I would really have to question our Governments true plans for this great country of ours.

Ah that was my piece of gold gleaned from yesterdays travelling experiences.

Travel during peak down the North Shore line yesterday afternoon Citybound was a little haphazard. All trains from around 5:30pm were 10-15 minutes late causing serious crowding on all stations I saw from North Sydney through to Central. At that time of the day with so many workers crowding into stations it just doesn’t work when the trains don’t show up.

Anyway as quite often happens at North Sydney, a train leaves that you’ve just missed. The station slowly starts to fill up with commuters. It’s been more than 5 mins between trains, people start looking restless and worried and looking down the line for that next train, it doesn’t come. Eventually the station fills up side to side and full length with commuters, when a train does come it’s not going to fit everyone.

Usually Cityrail keep you waiting the 5 minutes past 5 minutes late(so 10 minutes) before they start informing you the trains are out of time tabled order and initially no estimate on the next train. Finally the dreaded announcement, “The next City bound service departs from platform 3″, this means going up and over the platforms, which really was pretty tricky due to so many people on the platform and half the platform wanting to stay and the other half leave.

To Cityrails credit they were on the radios to the train crew to hold the train as it was due to leave, except half of Platform 1 was making the pilgramige over to Platform 3 and I’m sure the other commuters wouldn’t have been happy if it left whilst they were half way there.

Anyway, train was a cattle service as usual, my favourite point of the whole journey was the guard of the train after Town Halls crush “Welcome to happy hour, next stop Central”.

More of an informational, than a topical discussion here, but anyway, for the greater good. I heard and read today that from Monday 20th of October North Sydney will again have it’s ticket barriers in place(I suppose Railcorp need to start getting back some revenue)….

Honestly though, if you look at the typical commuter at North Sydney, it’s mostly students(who all have travel cards) and business people(who I’d like to think are 95% honest). The sheer flow of people that go through the station is massive, all through peak, I’d even say worse than Town Hall or Central due to the confined nature of the exits.

Anyway come Monday, be ready with your ticket and also be ready with your patience as I reckon it’s going to take alot longer to get out of the station.

I’ll tell you all more come Monday. Have a good weekend

Well, whilst not being the owner of one of these funky telephone/iPhone dudads as number of my work colleagues and friends do own them, and I seem them ALL over the trains on the way too and from work. One of my friends(RupertG) loves his 3G iPhone and pointed me towards a Cityrail timetable application that lets you check your timetables on the go.

3 used to offer a service like this, but it was webbased and not terribly easy to navigate. This iPhone application looks great and is easy to get around.

So when you are at the pub after work for those Friday drinks and need to know when the last train is, I think this could be your new best friend.

Check it out here

http://mobile.itransit.com.au